Chautauqua is a place where unabashed patriotism reigns and it’s the perfect place to be on the Fourth of July. Sunday afternoon we heard the Army Band and Chorus play a concert and last night the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra played a pops concert. Both concerts featured lots of patriotic songs. I am so grateful to live in a country where freedoms abound. Happy 4th of July!!
It’s amazing to me what I’ve accomplished in just three days. I’ve heard four sermons by Nancy Hastings Sehested, attended two lectures on marriage and the family, listened to three great concerts, attended two sessions of an intermediate level class on Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 where I’ve learned a variety of photo correction/enhancement techniques, read A Thousand Splendid Suns, taken about 100 photographs and posted this week’s assignment to my Painting with Light class, and completed my fifth layout for Jessica Sprague’s Up and Running class. There’s never a lack of things to do while at Chautauqua. I’m posting a few of the photos over the next few days in my Photo-a-Day log. Here is the fifth layout for my digital scrapbooking class.
We arrived at Chautauqua Institute this afternoon for a week of lectures, classes, reading, taking photographs, walking, and relaxing. The weather is beautiful, although a bit cool. The charm of this place never wears thin.
I’m caught up with Jessica’s Sprague’s class unless a new assignment shows up in my inbox tomorrow. Now I need to catch up with Amy Sorenson’s Write Now assignments. I love both classes, but the digi scrapping one is more challenging and thus, more appealing. So here’s #4, done without any templates. Had a bit of trouble with the stamp, but thanks to the message board, solved another problem. By the end of this course, I should be pretty familiar with Photoshop Elements. Next week while we’re in Chautauqua I’m signed up for an intermediate course in PSE. I think I’m ready and one of my goals for the summer will be accomplished before mid-July. Awesome.
I’m learning a lot from Jessica Sprague’s Up and Runnning course. Her video tutorials are awesome. Easy to understand, and I love being able to see and listen at the same time. The best part is when the course is over, I’ll still have access to all the videos. I’m afraid I might need them so this is a great feature. This week we started using alphas and brushes–totally new to me. In addition, I’m using an older version of Photoshop Elements so everything doesn’t work quite the same way. Nonetheless, with the help of the message board, I finished this layout this morning.
Here’s today’s food for thought at A Fancy Word for Simple:
Your job is to focus on my personal happiness, she said, & I’ve got big plans, so break time is over.
—Brian Andres, Storypeople
I wonder–especially on Mondays–what it might be like to have a personal assistant. Someone whose job it would be do to all the things I don’t like about my life . . . What tasks would you assign to your personal assistant?
I’m sure there are others but these come most immediately to mind.
I’ve caught up with one of my on-line courses. Here’s my second digital layout. I’m really getting into this!
The last week of school ate up all my time. I fell behind in my on-line courses and on the Her Space: My Space challenges. Here a few to catch up:
6-24
6-23
My Write-On Journal for Amy Sorenson’s journaling course on BPS.
6-21
6-20 Press: my great-grandmother’s iron. I use it as a weight for books/layouts while the adhesive dries.
6-15
I’m taking Jessica Sprague’s online digital scrapbooking course "Up and Running." I have her book Computer Tricks for Scrapbooking and I read her blog regularly so I was pretty sure I’d learn a lot in the course. I’ve completed my first digital layout (ever) and she made it really easy. Every day we get an email with more tips, kits to download, and midweek assignments. One more day with kids at school, three more days altogether, and then I can concentrate on the fun stuff. Here’s the first layout:
6-14-07 Her Space: My Space
Our boat just went in the water and into a much improved slip on the Genesee River which takes us out to Lake Ontario.
6-13-07 Her Space: My Space
Hands in my fifth grade classroom:
6-12-07 Her Space: My Space
21 report cards X 6 pages each=tired. Just 7 more days with kids. Ready for vacation.
6-11-07 Her Space: My Space
Not a fan of self-portraits and I’ve never tried with my Rebel XT except in a mirror, but here I am in my space today:
